T-Shirt Template

on my personal experience i found that is better to use a image that no fit all the space of the tshirt... if you use a little image or a image that is far from the edge of the t-shirt is much better

Hi Toyclean! Yes, images you put on anything will be distorted. But hey, it's okay; they are distorted in Real Life, too.

Put on a fairly tight t-shirt, and stand in front of a mirror, and you'll find that the circles no longer appear to have been drawn with a compass, and the straight lines aren't straight. It doesn't bother you, because your mind knows that they are really circles and straight lines, and interprets them as such.

The same thing will happen in SL. People looking at an avatar wearing one of your shirts will round out the circles and straighten the lines in their minds.

(If the lines don't look distorted to you when you look in the mirror, take a photograph, open it in Photoshop, and try to draw straight lines over the lines, and circles over the circles. See how badly they've gotten distorted? )

If things appeared perfectly projected onto the Avatars, we'd all be working to distort them, so they'd look more realistic.

Since all of us can move the sliders around, and no two chests are the same anyway, there is no possible way to compensate for the distortion, even if it were desirable to do so.

So go ahead, make your t-shirts, and don't worry about it. They'll look fine.

Gabriele, that is correct. The polygons on the sides of the UV Map are much narrower than they are on the front. (At 512x512, which is the maximum resolution, some of them are only a handful of pixels wide.)

You can compensate for that to some extent, by squishing your image on the sides, but it will look blurry when viewed in SL.

If you want a crisp, clear design, it's best not to make it much wider than I've made the harp, in the Example layer. (That's why I made it that size. )

Hope this helps!

Greetings, fellow SL Residents!

I've been tinkering with the T-Shirt Template (thank you Robin) in an effort to make some "fun" shirts for some of my friends.

My desire is for the shirts to be tintable, with the occasional hint of transparency as well. Transparency I'm pretty sure involves Alpha Channels in the shape of the body of the shirt, so I've been experimenting. Black bit, white bits, gray bits ...

But, after searching through the forum on how to do tintable garments, and coming up empty, I thought I'd ask!

Is tintability achieved in SL itself and I just don't know where to look? Or is it a Photoshop thing?

At my disposal is Adobe Photoshop CS3.

Thanks!

Hi Dakota! Tinting is something that's done in SL, not PS. In order for a garment to be tintable, it just needs to have the "Next owner can ..Modify" checkbox enabled.

Then whoever is wearing the garment can go into Appearance, pick that garment from the list on the left (for instance "Shirt", and they'll see a thumbnail of the texture used, as well as a color swatch, right under the thumbnail, that says "Color/Tint."

Clicking that color swatch opens a Color Picker, and whatever color is chosen there is applied to the garment, pretty much like Multiply is in Photoshop. (The garment can get darker, but never lighter; anything cyan will look green if you use a yellow Tint, etc.)

To make this work well, make your shirts white or some very light color, with a black and white design on them.

If you want to have the shirt tintable, but the design on it not, the only way to do it is to use two clothing layers. Put the empty shirt on a lower one (for instance, make it Underware.) Put the design on an otherwise totally transparent garment, and use it on the next one up (for instance, Shirt.) When people tint the lower layer, it won't affect the upper; but they will have to wear both layers of course. (Tattoos are often made the same way, so they can be worn on whatever Skin the owner desires.)

I also recommend that you make them Copy, so people can save the tinted shirts they make.

Which, of course, means to disable Transfer (Resell/Give away).

It's not a good idea to release full-perm items, ever. (Although it's not as dangerous with clothing as with prims, because clothing cannot be scripted.)

The problem is that a griefer can take a full-perm item, make it something obnoxious or broadly offensive, and it will retain your name, not theirs, as the Creator.

This isn't so bad if they have to wear the garment themselves; but you don't want something with a Broadly Offensive slogan, and your name as the Creator, turning up in Freebie boxes.

Hope this helps!

Thank you, Robin. Great advice.

You're the best!

how do i get the url for the template??

ive copied and pasted it gives me nothing maby its a old link and its dead

i have photo shop but cant figur out how to get just the new layer and not the templat?

http://www.robinwood.com/Catalog/Technical/SL-Tuts/SLTutSet.html

I don't think that URL has ever changed. In any case, I know it works right now. All the instructions you need are right there on Robin's site, along with the template itself. Have fun!

Hi Robin,

I have just started in SecondLife and plan to use your tshirt template to learn more about texturing in a 3D environment. I hope to learn all the things you describe in another post that relates to a "real" 3D environment (bump mapping, reflection, etc!).

I'm seen your work before, and I remember that I have used at least one of your items for Poser 4 (I think it was your Pentacle earrings!) so I'm glad that you are here, and offering your advice to us newbies and graphically challenged, and those who plan on learning more!

Hard do believe a post from 3 years ago is still getting traction? I got hear from the Second Life design wiki.

Peace,
Tassit Scribe

Is there similar templates for a jacket? Always seems like the t-shirt templates come up short on guys since they're jeans sit low so I need to look at making a jacket instead of shirt.

Skilar Windlow

Hi Skilar!

Mostly no, and a little bit yes, from me, anyway.

First, you don't really need a template. Just erase the folds from the T-Shirt template on my site, and then open the Lower Body template, and make a hemline where you want it. Just make sure that it matches the grid lines on both sides of the two discontinuous "islands" of UVs.

Make that the same color you make the T-shirt on the Upper Body, and use it for the Lower Body material when you make your jacket, and you'll have an untucked T.

If you want to see this in action, go to the Texture Library on Livingtree, open the Clothing 101 book, and click on the Menu tab. You'll find a notecard that has a long t-shirt template that uses the Jacket clothing layer. (You might find a lot of other helpful information in the book as well, of course.) The book is free to read, so the Notecard and template are also free.

There aren't any folds on the lower portion, so if you want those, you'll have to add them yourself. But I think it's fairly successful without.

The shirt texture is full perms, of course. (It has to be, to put in a Notecard) so if you really want to, you can Save it to your hard drive, and use it as a guide. But honestly, you can do this without. It's really very simple.

Hi can anyone help a lossed soul....I downloaded the complete aviatar mesh as mentioned earlyer in this post, but when I open the OBJ file in PS CS4 Extended the image looks so blocky its unworkable for making skins or clothing.... other OBJ files work perfectly..... dont understand why the Male Complete Avitar dosen't....tried to find another file on the internet, but to no avail..

Thanks Rolig, but unfortunatly thats the mesh which is causing the problem with Photoshop CS4 Extended.....The two file which are the problem are SL_Male.obj and SL_female.obj.....contained within the SL Avatar folder. The file SL_avatar.obj is perfect but is female.....just my luck I am trying to make male stuff...LOL

Thanks for your help

Yes, that one will look blocky without some work. The ones Robin posted for download in this thread (post #7) work great:

/109/27/178887/1.html

Thankyou Betty, you answered my prayers...and of course thanks to Robin...Hugs.

im using PSP 7.0 amd gettnig an error trying to open the template "Erros - 565" any ideas... I know its an old version its all i have right now thanks.

update - found the problem the version does not support PSD files... bummer does anyone have a version in a different file type If not ill be trying to update soon i guess lol.

Thank you

I have to say 'Thanks' to Robin for sharing your wealth of information and all you others that have added your thoughts and tips. I thought I knew Photoshop, but reading all of this was a real eye opener. I have a lot to learn and a lot of catch up to do. I used PH 7 for most of my work and bought CS3 Web Premium last fall and until recently, haven't really got into it and explored what it can do. Now the fun starts and a lot of long nights. For my work I use Illustrator and Photoshop. I am learning some 3D applications but still very much at the beginner level.

I was very interested in the 'wrinkles' tutorial listed earlier in this post. I had been hand brushing all of this detail in and it turned out ok. I now see a new way of doing this and with much better results. Thanks gang! great fun!